back on topic, all 8000 and 9000 series bb's have come out of the box with ability to tether, mms.....iphone and iphone 3G have not. out of the box comparisons, i would say the 8900 over the 3GS, but the 3GS now comes with a built-in compass.....i dunno whether to jump up and down over that feature or not.

back on topic, all 8000 and 9000 series bb's have come out of the box with ability to tether, mms.....iphone and iphone 3G have not. out of the box comparisons, i would say the 8900 over the 3GS, but the 3GS now comes with a built-in compass.....i dunno whether to jump up and down over that feature or not.

the devices may come out of the box with the features BUT, you still need to "pay" for the service (tethering), and setting up your computer to do so may be an issue for someone that doesn't really know what they're doing...

BTW, many iPhone 3G/3Gs owners have tethering working right now, simple OTA download...

i have NO IDEA, why at&t screwed the pooch with not having MMS/Tethering working by now... something about needing to provision all iPhone accounts to enable MMS... THAT my friend is gay but, i don't use MMS or tethering that often so, i can wait until the "late summer" release

BTW, many iPhone 3G/3Gs owners have tethering working right now, simple OTA download...

Jailbreaking aside, the iPhones have not been able to do this. I'm sure you could hack just about any phone to do just about anything, but if we keep the discussion to native capabilities, the iPhone has been lacking since the beginning.

It is improving, and the iPhone 3GS does have so very nice new features, but, for me at least, I won't go back to the iPhone until they add a keyboard. With the Pre out (for however long Palm can stick around - stocks are slipping again), it got me thinking that I would love to see a Palm Pre like device on the outside with the iPhone 3GS insides.

__________________
Ian

Semper Fi 3/2/2"Wow" is now overused. Therefore, I will use "Magic bananas" instead.

iPhone 3G/3GsPros:
-better internet browsing
-THOUSANDS of apps for almost anything you can imagine
-larger screen
-entertainment value (if its important to you)
-visual voicemail
-compass+maps (3Gs only); really only good when used together, lol
-iPod
-no need for additional storage
-ability to jailbreak to open many more options including but not limited to; themes, ringtone changing via SSH, etc...
-MUCH faster startup timesCons:
-push email works only for MobileMe & Yahoo (WTF GOOGLE!!)
-cannot upgrade battery
-resolution
-contact sync is NO WHERE NEAR blackberry's... specifically if you delete a contact on the iPhone, and sync it with iTunes it reappears on he iPhone... not like in BB DM where you can choose which device has priority on conflicts
-cannot run more than one app at a time (jailbreak fixes this however, kills battery quicker)
-NO GPS apps available yet
-no hardware keyboard
-cannot use MP3's as ringtones (must be in .m4r format)
-cannot change SMS ringtones (jailbreak fixes this with SSH)
-no LED status indicator
-no MMS/tethering until "late summer" (some people found a "workaround" just google it)

As much as people refuse to accept it, there are valid reasons (at least as I understand it) that the iPod Touch is a paid upgrade while the iPhone is a free upgrade. It all stems from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which itself stems from the fall of Enron.

This is not unique to the iPod Touch. There are other Apple products that fall under the S/O Act, as well as products from other manufacturers.

maybe a more constructive way to look at it can be:

assume you spend $ 200 on the device

assume you will be keeping it long enough for apple to release 'a few' OS upgrades (i would say about 3)....and assume you go for these upgrades.

you've paid 30 bucks @ retail and 200 for the device. you will never get back 230 bucks, as a matter of fact, most ebayers/etc. won't even consider the money you put into OS upgrades, and likely you might get 125-150 for it (conditionally)....

so to apple, you are worth a lot more than the device. and trust me, they will release newer and better in a fast-forwarded fashion. so, on a personal level, fundamentally it's a bunch of plastic metal and glass that keeps appreciating for them, but depreciating for you.

As for Apple, I love the desktop/laptop machines and Leopard (soon to be Snow Leopard). Never been happier with my computers, and this is coming from 30+ years on Windows machines, all the way back to MS-DOS. I'm not so much enamored by the iPhone (and to some degree, the iPod Touch) however. But, I do miss some of the apps on the iPhone. The apps were the hardest thing to let go of.

__________________
Ian

Semper Fi 3/2/2"Wow" is now overused. Therefore, I will use "Magic bananas" instead.

i find my OS flavors, tweak them to run better than everyone else's and call it a year. currently on vista x64 and ubuntu 8.10. after tweaks, my current hardware and software will last me 5 more years. others that hardly bother with maintenance wind up with an unusable machine after just 3 years (like my wife....ha ha).

then again, i don't download crapware or maneuver my machine directly into a hackers line of fire.....

so to apple, you are worth a lot more than the device. and trust me, they will release newer and better in a fast-forwarded fashion. so, on a personal level, fundamentally it's a bunch of plastic metal and glass that keeps appreciating for them, but depreciating for you.

Very true, but then virtually everything we buy depreciates over time, so I don't sweat it. Apple is not forcing me to upgrade, and the argument that the device will depreciate doesn't mean that Apple (or any other manufacturer) should discount the hardware to make my investment in that hardware better for me.

Apple is no different than HP or Dell or Microsoft or any other technology manufacturer in that they are always releasing newer, better products. That's the cycle of technology. I have known this long ago, and I still desire to buy into new products because I want them, and I am interested in them. The fact that there will be a newer device next month or next year doesn't stop me from buying now.

I use Adobe products for graphics work, including Photoshop. I am on CS4, and it cost me quite a bit to move from CS3. I know how this works... Adobe will release a few point updates to CS4, and then they will release CS5 next year at a cost close to $1000 to upgrade. I don't have to upgrade as Adobe doesn't force me to. I chose to upgrade because Adobe's products are tools for me. Would I love it to be cheaper? Sure. Do I feel slighted because it isn't? No. As I said, no one is forcing me to upgrade CS4, as Apple isn't forcing me to upgrade the iPod Touch.

__________________
Ian

Semper Fi 3/2/2"Wow" is now overused. Therefore, I will use "Magic bananas" instead.

my current hardware and software will last me 5 more years. others that hardly bother with maintenance wind up with an unusable machine after just 3 years (like my wife....ha ha).

I have a Mac Pro at home (what I'm using now) that is two years old. It will be getting Snow Leopard when that is released, and I fully expect it to last me many years to come. I have a Mac Pro at work that will also get Snow Leopard. It will also last me many years to come. I also have a MacBook Pro that will last for a long time, and yep... Snow Leopard on that one as well.

One thing I love about the Mac OS is the cost... I get 5 legally licensed copies of OS X for $179. With the promotion, however, I will get 5 legally licensed copies for $49. Wow! I had always wished that Microsoft would do that with Windows. Well, that and stop releasing 5 different versions of the same OS. That's another beauty, for me, with OS X... there's only one desktop version and one server version. Very simple.

All I am saying is that Macs are no less capable of long-term use that Windows machines, and that for me, Mac machines are my choice of hardware. They suit me perfectly.

__________________
Ian

Semper Fi 3/2/2"Wow" is now overused. Therefore, I will use "Magic bananas" instead.

All I am saying is that Macs are no less capable of long-term use that Windows machines, and that for me, Mac machines are my choice of hardware. They suit me perfectly.

point well taken. maybe over a stretch of say 5 - 7 years both platforms, when used wisely balance out close to the same money-wise.

macs are suited towards you since you use them for your work, so it's a natural extension for you to use them at home i guess....

i speak from personal experience where i once decided to dive into the mac world myself, abandoning windows altogether. after about 1 year of use, metaphorically speaking, the idea and technology got yellowed (just like the outside casing). fanboy comments to my problems/questions with itunes had a large part to play in my disgruntlement with the platform.

this was back in 04 when i bought a 20" imac. altho i was somewhat surprised that the platform's hardware was actually upgradable to a reasonable extent. but then there were apple 'restrictions' that led to a severe lack in software selection.

anyhow, i'm looking to depart from windows all together. i am really impressed at how much i can do in ubuntu, for free. so i refuse to wear the sucker shirt and keep paying for maintenance software like antivirus/firewalls.

but i'm hindered by 'restrictions' that make certain things i need to do (like update/backup my blackberry) hard to do or virtually non-existent in the newer linux platforms. so, catch 22

When I first decided to switch to the Mac, I actually took back my first machine (an iMac) after a week. I was frustrated after using Windows for so long. For whatever reason I tried again, but went with the Mac Pro that I am now using at home, and that time my experience was much better. It wasn't so much the hardware differences, but just the way in which I approached the switch.

It wasn't particularly easy to switch, and my father is an example of how I was before I did. He refuses to even accept that the Mac is a viable platform. Of course, he is 76, so he has been using Windows/DOS machines much, much longer than I have. Heck, he was a programmer in Fortran and COBOL for a while, and I still have, somewhere, a framed circuitboard from the huge room-size mainframe that he worked with.

Speaking of fanboys... I hate being called a fanboy just because I use and enjoy Mac machines (and I'm not suggesting that you are calling me that, I'm just speaking in generalities). However, I also hate those that are Apple apologists. Apple is not a perfect company by any stretch of the imagination. They make plenty of mistakes, and have some pretty draconian ways. Realistically, they are no better and no worse that Microsoft, although each company has its own unique set of problems.

I have dabbled with Ubuntu a bit, but as you said, I find it difficult to consider it a workable solution at present with the lack of significant mainstream support. Strange, as I remember Dell (I think it was Dell) was offering Ubuntu (or something similar) on some of their machines... is that even still going on? That could be a good boost to that OS.

__________________
Ian

Semper Fi 3/2/2"Wow" is now overused. Therefore, I will use "Magic bananas" instead.

You are right about apple releasing their new cmputers too close together, I bought my MacBook pro last February, only for them to come out with a new version the following month, then in September they came out withthe unibody, gay!!!

But as far as the OS's go, only the major updates, ie leopard to snow leopard cost money.

One thing I love about the mac OS is BOOTCAMP, due to my S4 you mentioned earlier, the diagnostic software they release for owners only run on windows. I have win xp on bootcamp and used blackviper.org to turn off non-essential windows tools and win xp runs faster on my MacBook pro then a friends brand new hp
machine he "downgraded" to xp on....

i know Fortran, i'm an engineer and learned fortran 77 when i went to college. altho the language has progressed so far and gotten so advanced that i'd have to take another course just to learn the newer flavor thoroughly (fortran 2003 i think), i still can write fortran 77 programs in ubuntu. the platform is open-source, the compiler is readily available and installable, and it's actually fun writing silly little programs to calculate and make statements.

in windows, i can only find compilers that come with paid software....

Quote:

Originally Posted by ifonline

Speaking of fanboys... I hate being called a fanboy just because I use and enjoy Mac machines (and I'm not suggesting that you are calling me that, I'm just speaking in generalities). However, I also hate those that are Apple apologists. Apple is not a perfect company by any stretch of the imagination. They make plenty of mistakes, and have some pretty draconian ways. Realistically, they are no better and no worse that Microsoft, although each company has its own unique set of problems.

the 'fanboys' i am referring to, a simple and very similar scenario would be something like you going onto the apple forums and asking how to go about burning an audio cd into itunes (let's say you didn't know and itunes was relatively new). and responses come up, one of them being: "Don't Steal Music !!"......that actually happened to me on apple forums, and i thought to myself W-T-F ?!? don't steal what ? my own audio CDs ? Geez....

Quote:

Originally Posted by ifonline

I have dabbled with Ubuntu a bit, but as you said, I find it difficult to consider it a workable solution at present with the lack of significant mainstream support. Strange, as I remember Dell (I think it was Dell) was offering Ubuntu (or something similar) on some of their machines... is that even still going on? That could be a good boost to that OS.

altho ubuntu and other flavors of linux are not on the cutting edge, they are pretty darn close. the reasons they have not been popular with most home users is because the code needed to decrypt or decode modern dvd and blu-ray movies rests in the hands of studios that would rather die than give the source-code out. therefore, getting dvd's to play back was a problem back in the early years of ubuntu. eventually the encryption was cracked and now dvd playback is no problem (yet frame rates and resolution requires a little work to get everything smooth and fluid during playback). again in recent years linux distros are not able to play blu-ray discs easily because of the new encryptions and standards. but once managed copy hits the market, i'm sure someone will figure out how to play blu-ray movies in linux.

this logic also applies to other areas of the OS with other 'proprietary' source-code, such as NVIDIA's video drivers, etc, etc....

You are right about apple releasing their new cmputers too close together, I bought my MacBook pro last February, only for them to come out with a new version the following month, then in September they came out withthe unibody, gay!!!

But as far as the OS's go, only the major updates, ie leopard to snow leopard cost money.

One thing I love about the mac OS is BOOTCAMP, due to my S4 you mentioned earlier, the diagnostic software they release for owners only run on windows. I have win xp on bootcamp and used blackviper.org to turn off non-essential windows tools and win xp runs faster on my MacBook pro then a friends brand new hp
machine he "downgraded" to xp on....

It's a never ending battle trying to keep up with technology, lol

boot camp i hear is cool. but most linux desktop platforms come with GRUB, which i configured the way i like so that i can autostart any OS i have installed upon bootup.....GRUB can also be installed stand-alone, so you can probably replace bootcamp with GRUB and install the real thing (XP) on a clean partition on your system. that way you don't deal with the virtual machine style lags and hickups and limitations in hardware support.

so i first had windows vista running on my system, then i partitioned up and installed ubuntu too. even got both OS's to play nice with my storage HDD, so i only need to have one copy of a music file or document or movie and grab it from the drive no matter which OS i'm loaded in.

since i shelled probably about $ 500-700 to date in windows software just for my current machine (which is only 1 yr old), but able to get ubuntu to do 85% of what i do in windows for free and not have to worry about viruses or firewall software, then y should i keep paying to use windows....?

in the long run it makes sense since the lifetime windows user probably must spend close to $ 1000 over 5-7 years just for antivirus software.....that's almost a brand new set of tires for my weekender, u know ?